“I understand,” he said, “that someone of your talent and intelligence would want to find a more proactive solution for our nothing problem. And what I’m saying is . . . Please help me. Help me do that. I can’t just pack up and go find something to believe in. I’m sorry, but I can’t. Maybe you can, but you don’t know what it’s like for me. You don’t have kids. I can’t just leave a job like this and start a bakery.”

“I have a son,” she said.

“I’ve done good in my life,” Miles insisted, annoyed with the way she was looking at him, like he’d let her down once again by being so typically Miles. He would have known she had a son if she had told him. Or, if she had told him and he’d forgotten, wasn’t forgetting important personal information about a coworker a human enough flaw to be forgiven this once? “I worked on a show,” he said. “People loved it. They wrote papers.”